14

14

A lden hadn't moved from the room when we got there. He stood more or less where I had left him, his eyes open and glassy, his breath coming hard and fast and wild. Once again, I found myself pulling back, afraid of something I couldn't quite name. I remembered, anew, that he had said Ashfield was cursed.

Hero didn't flinch. She stepped forward as though going to greet a friend for dinner, took Alden's hands in hers, and looked him in the eye.

"Alden," she said, gently yet firmly. "Alden, it's all right. Wake up. It's all right. Alden, look at me."

She said it a few more times; he tried to pull away, and she only held on more tightly. Slowly, his breathing calmed, and the terror on his face softened. He blinked rapidly a few times, and when he opened his eyes, they were his own again: bewildered, exhausted, no longer behind a glaze of fear.

"What…?" It came out husky; he cleared his throat and tried again. "Was I asleep?"

"You were." She released him. "You were sleepwalking again."

"Oh, bloody hell." His hands were shaking as he rubbed his eyes, but his voice was returning to normal. "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake everyone."

"You didn't. You woke Clover, who woke me. She's the one who deserves your apology. You frightened her to death."

"I'm sure I did. I'm sorry, Clover." He drew a deep, shuddering breath, like a child coming down from tears, and shook his head. "I think I need to sit down. I don't suppose there's a glass of something around?"

"Just this once, I'll fetch one. Don't think I'm making a habit of this." She glanced at me. "Will you wait with him? Make sure he doesn't fall asleep again before I get back."

"Of course." I was embarrassed now to have panicked so completely. I knew what night terrors were. Iris had been prone to them when she was three or four, and I had often been the one to calm her down. I had sat awake with Matthew in the kitchen for many long nights after his homecoming until he was ready to go back to sleep. But I'd never seen anything like Alden's nightmares. They looked a lot less like nightmares and a lot more like a curse.

Alden looked around when Hero left, and some of the bewilderment came back to his face. "Where—?"

"You're in one of the rooms in the east wing," I said quickly. I hoped he wouldn't ask how I had been able to hear him all the way from my room, and fortunately he seemed far too dazed to think of it. "Come and sit down."

I took him gently by the arm, and he let himself be led to the sofa. The floorboards underfoot creaked as he sank onto it.

"There's really no need to be frightened," he said, with a quick smile, as if remembering me or himself again. "I'm all right, I promise. Just a bit confused."

"You shouted at me. You told me to get away."

"I'm sure I did." His eyelids were starting to droop. "Sorry. I'm saying that to you a lot today, aren't I?"

I sat down next to him, carefully, and lowered my voice. "What were you doing here?"

"I don't know," he said vaguely. He forced his eyes open with effort. "I walk all sorts of places in my sleep."

Hero returned with a bottle and two glasses. "Here," she said. "You're in luck—your father's drinks cabinet was unlocked. This one's water, this one's a shot of whiskey. Take both and get back to bed, Fontaine."

"You're an angel." He swallowed both with such speed that I had no time to see which was which, and suspected neither did he. "I'll try to get some real sleep. Thank you, both of you."

I breathed a deep sigh after he left, without knowing why. The room without him in it seemed suddenly harmless—a bookshelf, a sofa, little else. Even the moonlight had dimmed. I felt, irrationally, as though a crisis had been averted.

"Here." Hero refilled one of the glasses, somewhat more generously than she had for Alden, and held it out to me. "We need it more than he does. He'll barely remember this in the morning."

I doubted that somehow, but I took the glass and swallowed without question. It was stronger and harsher than the wine we usually drank, and it burned going down. I coughed, and drank again.

Hero poured the other for herself and knocked it back with far more practice. "Well," she said dryly. "That put paid to an excellent dream I was almost having."

"I'm sorry I woke you," I said. "He warned me he sleepwalked. I should have tried what you did first."

"No, you did the right thing. He's more used to my voice in that state." She stretched, yawned, and leaned back against the wall by the fireplace. "He used to do that all the time when he was younger. When he was fourteen, he wandered out into the fields in the middle of a storm. God knows how the rain and the cold didn't wake him. It was one reason they used to have me over to stay such a lot. I was supposed to keep an eye on him."

I stared. "He seemed fine at Camford."

"Oh, he is fine at Camford. He was fine at Crawley, as far as I know. This place is bad for him. I have no idea why he wanted to spend the summer here."

"Why does he hate Ashfield so much?" I thought I'd understood, this afternoon. But his brother's loss didn't account for this level of fear. I found it hard to be on our farm these days; I didn't spend every minute there hanging on to sanity by my fingertips.

"He loves Ashfield—or he used to. That's the problem. He thinks Ashfield doesn't love him back. His brother was meant to inherit it, you see."

"Thomas?"

"Mm. Alden loved him too, but he was also jealous of him. Thomas was always his parents' favourite, and he resented it; he resented, as well, that Thomas would have Ashfield one day when he didn't really care for the house at all. The three of us made it our playground, Alden and Eddie and I, and Thomas was always off with friends in London. When Thomas disappeared and the inheritance passed to Alden after all, he felt that it was somehow his fault, and that the house knew it and blamed him. I know this because we got blind drunk together after his brother's funeral, and he told me—we haven't spoken of it since. Completely barmy, of course. Houses can't blame."

I tried to take this in. "Is he all right now?"

Hero snorted. "God no. He's a mess, but aren't we all? Well, possibly not you." She paused as if struck by a thought, then looked at me more seriously.

"Listen, darling," she said. "I know the temptation with Alden is to swoop in and try to save him from himself. Don't swoop too close. If he looks like he's drowning, throw him a rope, by all means, then step back and let him pull himself the rest of the way. He can, you know. He doesn't need you to jump in after him, and you're more likely to drown trying than he is. Did that metaphor hold? It's very late at night."

"Yes." I didn't know what else to say. "It holds."

"Good." She finished her glass, then set it down on the mantelpiece. "Well, I suppose I'd better be off to bed myself. Good-night."

"Hero?" The sound of my own voice surprised me. It was that time of night, when things were spoken aloud of their own accord. "Are you in love with Alden?"

"I think everyone's a little in love with Alden, if he wants them to be," Hero said, without batting an eye. "Not beyond reason. If you're asking if I would mind you sleeping with him—no. Not for my own sake. For one thing, I already slept with Alden, when we were sixteen. It was nice enough; I don't think it meant very much to either of us. Sex doesn't ever mean very much to Alden, as far as I can tell. He enjoys it, and he's good at it, but there's something not quite there."

I wished I didn't blush so easily. "No, I meant—"

"For your sake, though, I'd wish you better than Alden." She sounded serious now—or perhaps it would be closer to say she sounded thoughtful. "I love him dearly, even if I'm not in love with him, but he's a careless driver. People around him tend to get bowled over unless they stand very firm. Oh look, another metaphor. Eddie's devoted to you, you know."

"I know. I love him too."

"But you're not interested in him that way. It happens like that sometimes, doesn't it? Never mind."

I didn't know how to say that I wasn't sure Eddie was interested in me in that way either—I had suspicions about Eddie, but they were nobody's business, not even mine. Besides, I wasn't sure if I was interested in Alden in that way, not really. I loved all three of them, and I couldn't untangle in my head where that love started and ended. I loved working with Alden more than anything. I loved the way his mind worked: lithe and supple, all flash and daring, snatching up and playing with ideas that I was inclined to stand back from and dissect. Beyond that, I only knew that I cared for him; more than that, I was pulled to him, the way I might be pulled toward a forbidden book, with mixed fascination and wariness and wonder.

Well, that wasn't quite true. I have never to this day seen a book with Alden's cheekbones.

"I'll just warn you of this," Hero said into the silence. "You're very clever, as I'm sure you've noticed. It doesn't surprise me at all that Alden values your collaboration so much. But I'm sure you won't mind me saying that I am very clever too—at least as clever as Alden. So whatever you and he are doing together that you haven't told me about—and please don't think I haven't noticed—you might want to think about why he doesn't want me to know."

The nights in the Bodleian. The imp windows after dark. My insides squirmed guiltily.

"Do you mean that he's using me?" I tried to keep the hurt from my voice.

"No, not at all. Not in the way you mean. I think, though, there's something in all this nonsense about Agrippa and faerie doors that he doesn't want me to see—and I would see it. I've known him all my life. You don't know him so well, and he's aware of that. Try to watch out for it, if you can."

I went back to bed, through the corridors that had become shadowy and strange into the funny-shaped room that had become as familiar as a favourite jumper. I kicked off my slippers, lay down on top of the rumpled blankets, tried to close my eyes. This time, they wouldn't stay closed.

There's something in all this nonsense about faerie doors… Try to watch out for it, if you can. Now Hero had said it, I could no longer pretend not to see it. I had known the first day we had met that Family heirs like Alden Lennox-Fontaine didn't notice people like me without reason. That reason had been Agrippa, and faerie doors, and because that had suited me perfectly I had asked no further questions. But Family heirs also didn't obsess over faerie doors for no reason.

There had been something in that room with us both. I didn't let myself think beyond that, not then, lying awake in the dark. I knew, though, that I had seen that silver light before. It glimmered in the lines of every imp window Alden and I had ever opened. Every window he asked me to keep secret, even from our friends.

The night was waning when I accepted that I wasn't going to sleep. I sat up for the second time that night and, with a sigh, got to my feet.

There was no mistaking the silver glow now. It hung in the air as I mounted the stairs into the east wing, so thick I could almost taste its bitter cool on my tongue. When I came back to the room where I had found Alden, it blazed through the gap beneath the door. And yet when I pushed the door open, it was gone in a single fleeting glimmer, like a rush of mice dashing for cover when you open a pantry.

In its absence, the room looked just as it had a few hours ago. A cluster of furniture and oddments, ill-matched, like a life-size dollhouse waiting to be played with. I loved Ashfield dearly, loved how its size made it a self-contained world, but I did have to concede that it had far more rooms than it had a use for. The glasses Hero and I had used still sat on the mantelpiece, the only sign that anyone had been there for years.

I drew a deep breath, trying to calm my heart, and looked around. It was only a room, I told myself. A room like so many others. All I had to do was look and put my own fears to rest. In a few short hours, the sun would be up, and I would feel ridiculous to think I had done this. There was nothing to see.

There wasn't, at first. I was almost ready to leave when my eyes caught on the far wall. The grey predawn light from the window opposite was just beginning to illuminate the dark green wallpaper. Amidst the floral patterns, a few faint marks were visible. Chalk.

Nothing incriminating, not yet. The traces were too faint to make anything out. They could be marks for hanging pictures or God knows what else. Still.

I knew a few different spells to unmask something concealed. Their effectiveness, of course, depended on whether they were more or less powerful than the concealing spell. The one I felt surest of was the one we had learned in Basic Incantations, and I decided that, performed well, it had a greater chance than a more complicated one I would doubtless get wrong. I crossed my arms over my chest, fists closed, then slowly parted them. Manifesto.

Power coursed through my veins, so strongly that I wondered if something outside of me was trying to help it along. What was hidden wanted to be seen, and had a will of its own. It was the only explanation I could imagine for the light, and the only one I've ever been able to find for why in the very next breath the far wall blossomed into lines of silver. They spidered across the green wallpaper, ornate swirls like those in fancy garden gates. Last of all, they twisted into a doorknob, and stopped.

My heart stopped with it.

A door. It was a faerie door.